This is our pal Nate Tate. He spent the summer in China travelling around collecting recipes for a cookbook he's writing. On Saturday he offered to cook us up some dinner so he could beta test his instructions.

(ps: check out them nuts on that goat)

Jen.D and Nate Tate were cooking it up in my kitchen, breaking out all sorts of mystery ingredients such as potatos, green stuff and lotus roots.

(JJ says: "You just know you're a nasty cook when you bring your own lotus root.")

Special sauce was prepared pre-dinner, but most everything else was just thrown in the hotpot.

Drop all the stuff into the hotpot for a few mins then scoop it on out. Wicked good. (thanks Nate!)

We finished off a few bottles of wine and a dusty bottle of champagne (??) I found in the back of my fridge, before breaking out the Labatt Blue mini-keg (which was a gift from the late Foster Grant - thanks Fos!).

... so I distributed the party favors I picked up at Kmart earlier that day.

A handful of pedometers to aid in my brand new mini-project, Pedometer Wars! (sign up!)

We left my place around 10pm, caught a cab over to Double Happiness to meet up with a pretty crunked Grellan. We stayed for 20 mins before getting out of there (too crowded!) and randomly meeting up w/ Jenny J. + Alexis Alexa + Ali outside.

So we went over to Odea where some guy in a suit refused to give us a table, so we left (causing him to run after us... "Sir, sir... we actually DO have a table open!"). So then we walked by Spring Lounge + Von + Sweet and Vicious just looking for any place that wasn't packed w/ Upper East Side kids. We ended up at Pioneer Bar for one drink which still kind of sucked (even though we had a table in the back) before splitting up.

Team Grellan want to Slanche while Team Freestyle Walking headed east. Frustrated from a bunch of walking around from one shit bar to the next, things got a little rowdy (hence, freestyle walking). Randy blew us all away with a not-so-smooth front salad to back salad off two Rivington Street mailboxes (er, not really) before we ended up at Barramundi where we met up w/ Kevin.K + Lisa + Lock.

@ Barramundi. Blurriness after this. Were we asked to leave?

Like 8 of us ended at my place around 3:30 or so with a pizza (ugh) and 12 tallboys watching skate videos.

Good times!

Sunday = Jill's kind-of-post-birthday dinner at Dinosaur BBQ (Average. There, I said it.) and then at Croxley with Becca + Randy + Grell. I took minutes, Student Council style:

I. Going Out on the Weekend Sucks

A. Downtown is Too Crowded

B. Upper East Side Kids Need To Go
1. We should start hanging out uptown!
2. If they're going to take our bars, we'll take theirs!

C. Can't Wait for Ski Season
1. I'm over the weekend scene in NYC
2. Snow Barn (VT) can't be any worse.
3. Would it hurry up and get cold so it can snow?

II. We Need to Find Some New Places to Hang Out

A. No More Starting an Evening at Any of the Following Venues:
1. Magician
2. Barramundi
3. Spring Lounge
4. Local 138
5. Lotus Lounge